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Waiting

Sometimes we race our caterpillars along a track that someone has laid out on the worn rug. The track runs across one corner of the waiting room, and we have it shielded by a couple of racks that usually contain various forms and instructional booklets, so that no-one can accidentally, or otherwise, tread on our racers. We tried racing ants at one time, but they just wander off all over the place. We couldn’t train them at all. You’d think that ants would be perfect for racing, being social insects and all that, but they couldn’t even walk a straight line. Zig-zag, round in circles, bumping into each other, like crazy blind men. So we stuck with caterpillars.

We feed the caterpillars on bits of salad from the sandwiches that are brought round twice a day. Lunch is usually cold cuts, lettuce, tomatoes, all that stuff, between white bread, and the sandwiches are generously filled, so we can feed our pets well. Our caterpillars grow fat and furry in no time. The evening meal is cooked, and our racers won’t touch cooked food, and indeed, there might be a rule about that sort of thing.

Rules

We only race in the afternoons. Mornings are for study and discussion, when the older residents recite the Waiting Room Rules so that we can learn them by heart. This is difficult because there are so many rules. Some of us will never learn all of them, no matter how hard we try, and indeed, every day, new rules are posted on the outside of the closed office door, and old rules are amended and refined, and some are even cancelled. There’s talk amongst the older residents of splitting the rules into several volumes for better manageability. Some say there should be a volume for waiting room etiquette and behavior, and one for forms preparation and miscellaneous matters. There’s even talk of a volume for Rules of the Interview, although no-one, to my knowledge has ever managed to achieve an interview. The disadvantage of this is that no-one person would then know the complete structure of all the volumes, the complete sum of all the rules that govern our existence. On the other hand, there would be no danger, as often happens now, of a rule being forgotten or misinterpreted, so that some time in the future, should accurate knowledge of a rule be required, we would be ready, in the form of our specialist in forms preparation, or interview procedure, to comply completely and accurately with the demands of the waiting room staff.